Five on Friday

Hello dear friends and readers,

It's that time of the week again so today I am joining in with Five on Friday (hosted by my lovely friend Amy of Love Made My Home). This week has been a fairly quiet one although I seem to have spent ridiculous amounts of time ferrying children about and driving to and from various schools. My 3 Little People all go to different schools. Mr Teenager goes to a secondary school that's 4 miles away, with his autism he wouldn't cope with the bus so I drive him there and back each day. Little Miss is at our local catchment secondary school and walks there with her friends. She loves that independence, and even if it's tipping it down with rain she'd rather walk than have a lift from me. I'm so, like, embarrassing. And Little Tomboy is still at primary school so I walk her there and back. It's a bit of a juggling act and in the afternoon I don't always have time to drop Mr Teenager and my car at home before walking up to get Little Tomboy, so sometimes I pick her up on the way home in the car, but I prefer to walk if I can. Then you add in all the clubs (football, gymnastics, drama, guides, kickboxing, Photoshop-club, badminton) and its a wonder I am ever at home. 

Anyway enough waffle ... here are 5 snippets of my week .....

1. Little Tomboy's school had some duck eggs that they nurtured, and last week they hatched - great excitement. It wasn't in her year but we popped in to the relevant classroom after school one day to see them ..... Soooo fluffy and cute .....

2. On Monday the pre-school attached to our primary school had a fundraising bingo night. Just in the school hall, bring your own snack and drinks - bottle of rosé wine, don't mind if I do - do you like my heart paper-cups - so classy. It was a fun night, I won £5 (so it's not big money!) and a nice little raffle prize of some hand-cream. The raffle prizes are donated by people and are often unwanted gifts or bottles of wine, so it can be hit and miss. I have in the past won a bottle of wine which was so revolting I poured it down the sink. I know. Yes it was that bad. So nice hand-cream was a pleasant surprise :)

3. There has been a bit more in the way of sunshine and blue skies this week, and the daffodils are coming through. This is our local park which we pass on the way to school each day, and at which Little Miss hangs out with her friends. Even though she's at secondary school now you are never to old to play on a swing 😊 There's also a great little local cafe and of course all important sweet shop.

4. Little Miss goes to Guides and they've been working on their Confectionery badge. I think basically this teaches them how and where to get inordinate amounts of sugar into their diet. They need to learn how to make truffles and peppermint cremes, and at their meeting on Tuesday they made little icing cake-toppers. She made this one of a teddy sort of hanging over a moon, so sweet. Literally.

She also made cupcakes, but we aren't allowed to mention those because she stupidly left her bowl (containing her last cupcake) on the sofa in reach of Pixie. So, yes, it got eaten by the dog, cupcake case and all. Lots of tears. Mr EC (big softy) gave her a little bowl of Minstrels by way of consolation. She ate one then dropped the bowl on the floor so the dog got those too. More tears. We then sort of accidentally reminded her that she had wanted to give up chocolate for Lent, and a minstrel is ... well ... chocolate. Even more tears. Not a fun evening. Luckily the cake-topper did not meet with any calamity and is still intact.

5. We had a really lovely afternoon last Sunday out at our local National Trust Property, Basildon Park. If you follow Amy's blog Love Made My Home you will have heard about Basildon Park, as Amy works there, and I have also blogged about it before here. Mr Teenager is now of an age where he doesn't want to come along, and needs his own space and some peace from his sisters, so we leave him at home playing xbox online with his friends. This is a recent development for us: having to drag a reluctant autistic 12-13 year old everywhere is not fun let me tell you. He tries very hard but, due to the autism, anywhere new causes so much anxiety and upset, it's always a nightmare trying to get him to get ready and causes everyone to get super-stressed and grumpy before we've even left the house. So for us now to be able to leave him at home (and for him to be okay with that) is really a bit of a game-changer.

Anyway, back to Basildon Park.  So we went out with just the girls. This time we went slightly off-piste and instead of walking round the garden we followed one of the trails - the orange one - through the woodland. Ok, so not strictly off piste then, but a bit of an adventure nonetheless. We covered about 4 miles, we had one tired little doggy at the end. It was extremely muddy - we had a few slippages and near misses but nobody actually fell over.

You can just see the front of the house through this gap in the trees ....

I wish we could have taken credit for this awesome little shelter but it was not us who made it. Isn't it fab ?

The end of the walk brings you out at the side of the house ...

....and being back at the house means you are at the tea-room. They even have a special extra tea room where dogs are welcome 😊

In the above photo you can see a press/cupboard at the far end - here is a closer look. I just adore it, I'd love something like that in my kitchen however Mr EC is very much the minimalist and would definitely resist that decision. So perhaps best not to go there!

Hope everyone has had a great week.

Til next time,

Jillxxx